This strikes me a pretty pointless and mundane, but I’m curious to know if other people do this. On a whim the other day I decided to customize the sounds on my computer. So now when I log on to it, I’m asked what my bidding is, might change more sounds if I decide I like it. Do you do this kind of thing? If so, which sounds did you change? Can you do this on Macs?
Yeah, my Windows sounds have been reflexively set to “none” for about fifteen years now - although just before then, I did have my start-up sound set to Sinistar’s admonishment, “Beware, I live!” That was kind of cool, for very small values of cool.
I used to have my machine all Simpson-ed up.
Thiswas my windows startup .wav…
Now I’m afraid I’m old and quiet in my computing.
Thanks to Daniel Pinkwater, my machine sounds like an old Jewish man.
I used to have a computer set up to play “Start Me Up” by the Rolling Stones on Windows start up (inspired by an old Microsoft commercial. And I had it set to play “The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down” when I closed Windows.
I used to do this, but started getting sick of reptition and hated changing them. My dream would be windows noises that are procedurally generated to produce organic noises like whistles or chimes that are never quite the same.
Until then, I keep most system sounds muted.
yeah, I can understand the reptition, for just a few minutes I set a sound for starting and stopping navigation in my browser.
the type of sound generator you envision (presumbably would be an add on at first) would be cool.
I keep my Mac on mute just because I hate the loud and jarring start up sound so much.
Nice! Daniel Pinkwater is awesome.
I think I still have that on a desktop. “What is thy bidding, my master?”
I shut off all sound, too, and so does my dad, except he really loved the startup sound to Puppy Linux. All it is is a tiny, barely audible bark. He would put on the headphones just to hear it.
I’m surprised he hasn’t asked me to put it on his new computer.
That gives me an error, but i used to have “Hello…Smithers…You’re…quite…good…at…turning…me…on” as my startup sound.
Joe
I used to have my machine all dolled-up with Monty Python and Simpsons. Probably in the late 90s-early 2000s.
But like most of you, something changed and I ended up muting most of my sounds.
Does anyone keep on sounds for “new mail” or “incoming IM” anymore? How about in an office? That’d be awful!
Wayyy back in the day I had a 1st generation Powermac G3 with Star wars and 2001 sounds. When I booted up HAL would say Something like “All systems are performing normally.” On shutdown it was HAL singing “Bicycle Built for Two” or C3PO saying “If it’s all right I’m going to shut down for a while.” WHen I got e-mail Princess Leia said, “Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi”. My IM sound was a Chewbacca roar (that got old). That was all before the switch to OSX. I have no idea how to change that stuff now.
I changed a friends Amiga to the old school cylons phrases, which took a bit of tweaking [no internet back in the late 80s and so I had to type in the phrase and tweak the sounds properly]
I had my original PC [it was running win 3.11] set up with a bunch of lines from 2001, I love HALs voice. If I had the money I would pay the actor to do voice capture for all sorts of phrases with my name in place of DAVE =)
I’ve been using “Message for you, sir!” from Monty Python and the Holy Grail as my email notification for about 20 years now. Still cracks me up. I’m easily amused, I guess.
I should probably change the four tone chime that plays when I shut down my Windows laptop. It’s the same (or similar) tonal structure to “Under Pressure” by Bowie/Queen, the part at the end right before they start snapping. Whenever I log off and put my computer in the bag to take home, I end up with that song in my head. Multiple times a week. Drives me crazy.
That’s a good one, tho. One of the ones I used way back when I did sounds.
How often do you check your mail? My computer stays on 24/7 and email is checked every 15 minutes, and I usually get some every 15 minutes. A sound would drive me nuts!
When my husband’s boots up it says, “Where’s the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!”
(He used to have Homer Simpson’s voice saying “Computers can do that?” when some specific thing happened, but I don’t remember what it was.)
That’s my exact quote on startup, as well. Previously, it’s been a quote from HAL9000, or Chuck Heston yelling, “Soylent Green is PEOPLE!”
I got rid of the sounds for emails (it was also the Message for you sir!" quote)since that does indeed get redundant. But My print complete sound has always been “Look sir. Droids!”
I saw my first Mac in college, must have been 1987 or '88. A friend and I were working in Pagemaker, creating a booklet for some function. All of our prior computing experience had been on DOS-based PCs, so we were duly impressed with the graphics on the Mac, and of course this “mouse” thing one used was pretty cool too.
Anyway, the machine sat on the desk of our faculty advisor, and I guess he decided the standard Mac sound palate was too dull. One of us made an illegal mouse click or something, and from out of the Mac we hear:
[QUOTE=Mac]
I’m sorry, Dave. I can’t do that.
[/QUOTE]
Freaked us. Right. The hell. Out.
So then of course we had to replicate the experience. Remember when little things like this seemed really cool and futuristic?